Meals at Craig House

Trenna’s Writing on the Subject – And Plans to Write About Herself

Mainly by Trenna, Brief Intro by Greg

Introduction

This piece of writing by Trenna was on her laptop computer (not her iPad) and appears to have been commenced on 21 July 1997, and further work done on it in 1998.

It looks like she did most of the work, but never came back to it. The first part is very orderly and polished, the later part looks more like a draft, plus a few extra notes. It’s even possible that it was more complete, but parts got accidentally deleted at some point – we’ll never know??

Because Trenna was writing, rather than telling an oral history the piece is a lot more evocative than some of The Kitchen Tapes.

There is a very interesting extra section on the end of the original document (and reproduced below). It is a very brief outline of an autobiography to cover Trenna’s Craig House days. This is 20 years before we eventually started her oral history recordings, that I have named The Kitchen Tapes.

Everything that follows is Trenna’s work.

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MEALS

The Menu

Each Sunday afternoon, Matron would write up a menu for the coming week’s meals. She would do this, as she did with many of her ministrations, under the dim light of the large “Vat 69” green bottle based lamp that towered over her small mahogany roll-top desk.  The desk fitted snuggly into the right hand nook of her study, between the study fireplace and her bedroom.   Matron’s grand bosomed frame crowded this area, it was an ominous sight.

Matron could be generous just as easily as she could be relentless.  If she had had a bad week, she would do the menu solo, and with great gusto.  You could bet your bottom dollar that silverbeet, swede, broad beans and offal would feature heavily.  However, if you were shrewd enough to have judged her mood right, it was a wise move on your part to be close at hand, in case she bellowed for assistance. 

She detested idle hovering.  So a judicious playing of the piano in the dining room, or reading a worthy hardcover in the sitting room, could reap you tangible rewards – you’d score points from her for your obvious diligence, thanks and favours from the other kids, provided your menu choices, were prudent, and not least of all, a well satisfied belly for yourself.

There were few of us fortunate enough to like most food.  On the whole, meal-time was viewed with loathing and contempt by those kids with less tolerant tastes.

Once the menu had been done, it was secured with a bulldog clip to the previous menus, and hung on a nail on the window frame just inside the kitchen door which led in from the enclosed back porch.  The fortnightly “job roster” was also hung in this area.  It was a focal point, a gathering place for comment and discussion and bargaining.  It was one of the first places you’d head for on a Sunday evening on your return from “a weekend away”.

Breakfast

Generally, weekday breakfasts were a pleasure for me.  We would queue for our meal which was served through the “hatch” from the kitchen.  Matron would nominate the table to go and be served, and insisted on an orderly and speedy queue.  The rule was, you ate what you were given, and everybody got the same portion.  However, Mrs Grant, the breakfast cook, could be swayed, especially if you’d helped with any kitchen work, and a larger or smaller quantity of one of the following could come your way.

devilled kidneys would always cause the most groans

fried banana with bacon and fried bread was always over–fried in a soup of lard

eggs were a favourite and we had them scrambled and fried, soft boiled and poached

finely chopped onion with sweet stewed tomatoes was a favourite of mine

baked beans and spaghetti came in large ‘unbranded’ tins that read BAKED BEANS or SPAGHETTI, they most certainly weren’t “Heinz”

the bubble and squeak was usually, not bad, but often left you guessing

We would round off the meal with triangles of toast which had long gone cold.  They had been strategically placed in metal racks along the centre of each table prior to breakfast.  There were also small dishes of honey, homemade marmalade and homemade margarine with individual little spoons or butter knives.  These you would always serve in neat little blobs on the side of your plate.  It was a “boys’ job” to serve the beverages.  We could choose to have the usually well brewed leaf tea, or thick instant coffee, the likes of which I have not tasted since.

Weekend breakfasts however, were the bane of my culinary existence at Craig House.  I gagged and sweated at the thought of them.  This reaction, was quite contrary to the sentiments of the rest of the rank and file.  Mrs Grant had weekends off, so the cooked meal part of the breakfast made way for cereal or porridge.   Cereal and oats were bought in bulk and kept in the storeroom for anything up to, and maybe even more than a year. 

The storeroom was just an ordinary room in “The Annex”.  It was not a ‘cool’ room, it was not sealed in any special way, other than with a common door lock and key which Matron kept to keep out pilfering children.  Consequently the large boxes of puffed wheat, rice bubbles, cornflakes, weeties, all-bran and oats invariably were made up of a good quantity of weevils. 

It was a “girls’ job” to fill each cereal bowl on each person’s placemat prior to breakfast. I liked this job, it gave me the power to discriminate.  I would pour myself the smallest amount possible.  If another girl had this job I would plead with her to show mercy.  I actually did OK in this regard, because Matron seldom checked the cereal quantities, assuming that everyone thought this a treat.

My problem with cereal was many-fold.  Basically, I liked savoury food much more than I liked sweet food.  I didn’t like the concept of crunchy grains, or bits, or flakes of cardboard-stuff floating in cold milk.  I didn’t like the texture of cereal.  Particularly Puffed Wheat which felt much like eating finger nail clippings.  I didn’t like how it always got caught in my teeth or wedged in between my orthodontic plate, but most of all was my fear of weevils.

This was all brought on by Sue Crossing one day sitting opposite me painstakingly scooping “things” up to the rim of her bowl.  She did this again, and again, and again, and again, and I was troubled and mesmerised by her behaviour.  I examined  the contents of my bowl for a possible explanation.  Head down, discreetly jiggling the left arm of my bi-focals to position my lenses for maximum magnification, I surveyed my lot.  I could see nothing other than a closer view of the unpalatable stuff I expected to see.  When Sue finally sore my perplexity she silently mouthed some word to me.   Squinting, I remained perplexed.  She mouthed it again.  I still didn’t get it.  She cupped her hand around her mouth and whispered deeply “WEE-EE-VO-OOLS”.  The table shuddered, the crockery rattled as Matron’s heavy fist pounded the table.  She boomed emphatically in her “Best of British” manner – which we often cruelly loved to mimic, “Eat the Ruddy Stuff, they won’t Ruddy Bite you”, the emphasis heavy on the words, eat and ruddy.  I had tears in my eyes as I dragged my spoon through the milky mess blindly trying to avoid what my eyes couldn’t see, but what my “mind’s eye” clearly depicted as a seething mass of “God only knows what”.   This was the start of my lifelong revulsion for cereal per se. 

Lunch

Making weekday lunches was a “girls’ job”.  Two senior girls and one junior girl would rise each day at 4.45am..  It was a hated roster during the cold dark mornings of winter.  However, once you were up it wasn’t so bad, and it was a job that was free of adult supervision.  You could muck about and pinch a bit of cake or make a cup of coffee, stuff you weren’t supposed to do.  However, you had to keep alert, as Matron loved nothing more than donning her pastel floral dressing gown and pink fluffy slippers, sneaking up to the door which separated the dining room from the kitchen, thrusting it open and booming accusingly  “What’s going on?”. 

It was also one of the most demanding of all the jobs, as on occasions the sandwich fillings would need preparation the evening before.   Mock Chicken for example had to be chopped and whipped together.  I have no idea now of what made up this filling, but I think I liked it.

From Tuesday to Friday we took sandwiches or rolls, cake and fruit to school.  I didn’t like sandwiches on the whole.  This was due partly because the bread was seldom fresh, but also our homemade margarine was ‘peculiar’, and the fillings, often made the bread soggy, or were too dry, or old, and at times mouldy.   On Mondays we were given prepaid tuck shop or canteen vouchers.  Our homemade stuff just couldn’t compare with a tuck shop pie.

The lunches were prepared on the laminated table that held centre stage in the kitchen. It was a large and solid construction by anyone’s measure, jarrah no doubt.  When its side-wings were lifted, transforming the rectangular surface into a vast square arena, the floor disappeared.   Against the back wall and adjacent to the table sat the cumbersome double door fridge.  It was vital to check you’d gathered from its belly, all of the ingredients needed that day, prior to lifting the wings.

On those occasions when something was missed you would have to perform a heavy balancing manoeuvre.  You’d positon yourself in front of the fridge, fold in the side-wing supports, balance the weight of the side-wing, lower it sufficiently enough to allow one arm access into the fridge, retrieve the ingredient, replace the supports all before any sandwiches slipped off the slope and onto the floor.  There was many of us who weren’t dexterous enough to perform this manoeruvre with total success.

Bread was kept in large cast iron bread barrels in the cupboards under the bench against the back wall of the kitchen.  Occasionally, we would have horse-shoe rolls, but generally we had bread which needed to be sliced.  The large metal slicer sat permanently on the kitchen bench under the “rosters”. You’d feed the bread through the circular blade with one hand, while turning the handle that rotated the blade with the other. It required concentration, yet I recall no injuries.

As the bread was cut, the slices were laid out onto the tabletop in a specific order.  One section for the “1 rounders”, one section for the “2 rounders”, one section for the “3 rounders”, and a small section for the hungry “4 rounders”. 

At the beginning of each term you could nominate how many rounds of sandwiches you’d like.  Most of the girls stuck with one round, but I occasionally braved two, and as a consequence often found myself a week or so later, having to covertly remove the smelly and festering remains of a forsaken lunch from my school bag.

Each girl would do a particular part of the preparation.  One would spread, one would chop ingredients, one would wrap.  We had a variety of fillings – salad with cold meat which we usually had in rolls, cheese and sultanas, cheese and celery, cheese and gherkin, cheese and fruit chutney, cheese and pickle, fish paste, mock chicken, or mashed banana. 

It was a rule to always cut sandwiches diagonally in half.  It was considered ‘poor manners’ to simply cut straight down the middle of a sandwich.  Matron was very particular about manners and standards.  For example, the grease-proof paper that wrapped our lunch, had to be folded in one way only – the sandwich placed in the middle of the sheet, top and bottom edges lifted to meet each other, then folded down in crisp, sharp one inch pleats, the sides were then each folded to form a triangle, which were then neatly tucked under the sandwich.  There could be no variance on this method, and Matron would do spot checks to ensure the status quo.

The season of course determined the fruit we would have.  The fruit was kept in the “fruit” cupboard on the enclosed back porch.  This was a double storey cupboard with mesh sides and doors.  There was a “fruit cupboard” key and sometimes the cupboard would mysteriously be unlocked and kids could “raid” the fruit. The fruit for the day would be placed on the table that was on the back porch, ready for collection.

The cooks Mrs Goddrum and Mrs Malski would bake every other day.  So we would have rock cakes, butterfly cakes, fruit cake and others.  These were wrapped the same way as the sandwiches, then placed on the bench in the designated area ready for collection by each child after breakfast.

* *

children in India are starving”.

She continued her excavations.

as they painfully laboured over their meal forced into swallowing large mouthfulls of any number of in their eyes – indigestible.

Could this I was feeling at this point, be the same as what Sally or Brian or any of the others for that matter, felt when they were forced to dissect and eat a sheep’s heart replete with valves, veins and ventricles?  Surely not!

The most dreaded meal in my eyes was the boiled meal.  It consisted of boiled silverside, boiled spud, boiled leek or onion, boiled swede, boiled cabbage and covered in a white sauce which had been boosted with capers.  It was truly a diabolical meal for children to endure.  I however got off lightly because I seemed to like most meals and although I was painfully skinny I ate the size of meal that most of the boys ate.  You at the start of each term were given a choice of plate sizes.  Pink was very small, then medium, then large, and once you had opted for a particular size you were committed for the term.  There was no discussion about whether you ate all your food or not, you just did.  If there was any poor fool who tried to get away with not eating everything on the plate they soon learned.  Compared to these days – 1998, children or teenagers were much more compliant and obedient to authority. 

Our diet was very well balanced we ate cooked breakfasts, one of the girls’ jobs was to make the lunches which always included sandwiches, cake or biscuits and fruit.  Dinner was always a formal occasion boys in ties, girls in dresses and we had a main meal and desert.

I wasn’t a particularly popular girl.  I wasn’t disliked, but I was generally a loner and naive.  However, I was known for my ability to eat.  Especially offal.  There was many a time that someone sitting next to me would deftly fling kidneys on to my plate just as quick as I could eat them.

But woe be tide if Matron noted any discrepancy in portions, she’d thump the large jarrah tabletop and order its return to the hatch for rectification.

Some of the Meals I Remember

queens pudding

apple strudel

apple crumble

rhubarb

chocolate blancmange

sago and junket

vanilla icecream, chinese gooseberries, crushed granita biscuit

trifle (matron made this)

banana custard with desiccated coconut

prunes and custard

boiled plums and custard

tripe

south african fillet

oxtail stew

irish stew

tongue

toad in the hole

matron’s curry

chicken chop suey

Sunday roast

lambs fry and bacon

sheep’s hearts

welsh rarebit

scrambled eggs

fish cakes

whole corn on the cob

fresh fruit

apples and salt

brown goats milk cheese from the gourmet section of Boans

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A Questionable Legacy        

An autobiography to be sent to a Perth publishing house, Legacy House, South Perth Historical Society

the style will be lighthearted, but occasionally sobering

 it will be chaptered on occurrences and personalities rather than dates, such as

            the blue/pink room’s on fire

            legatees to dinner

            jobs     

            menus, and table manners

            homework

            the boys & girls quarters

            Matron & the housemaster & housemistress

            Wagging music and the nuns

            Going to town

            The Hardy Street houses

            Gym

            Holidays

The Market:    Local history readers

                        Family and friends

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